Op/Ed

Can We Just Get 2016 Over With, Please?

Posted
December 28, 2016 05:10 am | Op-Ed

By Joe Henderson

When the news came on Christmas Day that
singer George Michael had died, well … can we get this
year over with, please?

Just this month alone, we have lost actor Alan Thicke,
astronaut/hero John Glenn, actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, former
Florida Lieutenant Gov. Jim Williams, broadcaster Craig
Sager and musician Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake and Palmer
fame. This was after Keith Emerson of the same band died
in March.

We had to say goodbye this year to former first
lady Nancy Reagan, a classy dame if there ever was one.
We lost Supreme Court Justice Antonin
Scalia, Prince, David Bowie, Gene Wilder, Garry
Shandling, Patty Duke, Abe Vigoda, Leon Russell, Pete
Fountain, Merle Haggard, Glenn Frey … so many others.

Make it stop!

I mention all this because it’s customary at this
point on the calendar to look back upon the nearly
finished year, hoping to gain some perspective about
what we went through and what might be about to come.

If it’s OK with you, though, I think 2016 has been
filled with so many things we would like to forget (and
I’m not even talking about Donald Trump … yet) that we
should cut this year short. It has been an unwelcome
guest for 51 weeks, and it needs to go away.

That has been particularly true in Florida.

We learned that terrorism can happen close to home
when 49 people were murdered at the Pulse nightclub in
Orlando.

We had the Zika virus. There was green ooze from the
Lake Okeechobee algae bloom, fouling nostrils along the
East Coast. We had a massive sinkhole in Polk County
that polluted the aquifer.

We had two reminders from Mother Nature that she is
still in charge. Hurricane Hermine helped flood St.
Petersburg’s streets with untreated sewage, followed by
Hurricane Matthew that scraped its way up the East
Coast.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, trying for a
13th term in Congress, got a double whammy – a federal
indictment alleging she had misused money earmarked for
charity, and then she was beaten in the November
election in her redrawn district.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio was humiliated when he lost the
Florida Primary by a wide margin to Trump. But Rubio,
who had vowed not to seek re-election because he was
frustrated in the Senate, ran anyway and won.

We couldn’t even turn to sports for escape.

After winning a gold medal at the Summer Olympics in
Rio, U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte embarrassed
himself as his country by making up a story about being
robbed. The former University of Florida star lost
millions in endorsement contracts after his fib was
exposed.

The Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins were terrible,
and the season ended in tragedy when Marlins star
pitcher Jose Fernandez died in a boating accident. The
Tampa Bay Buccaneers were teasingly good until they
figured out what they were doing right and corrected it.

The federal government basically ground to a halt,
and the election was the nastiest anyone can remember as
Trump and Hillary Clinton drove Americans to drink. When
it was done, the nation had elected a man who has never
held public office and believes in government by tweet,
wants to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and
has hinted that we should expand our nuclear arsenal.

What possibly could go wrong?*

With that in mind, you know that thing I said about
needing 2016 to hurry and finish? Maybe we can coax this
year into sticking around a little longer. As they say,
things could always be worse.

---------------

Joe Henderson had a 45-year career in
newspapers, including the last nearly 42 years at The
Tampa Tribune. Mr. Henderson has numerous local, state and
national writing awards. He has been married to his
wife, Elaine, for nearly 35 years, and has two grown
sons.
Column courtesy of Florida Politics.

*Note: this
piece was written before the untimely death of Carrie
Fisher

This piece was reprinted by the Columbia County Observer
with permission or license.